Gays – more dangerous than King George III

Colonial America was known in part for the horrid treatment of the colonists by the British Empire. Quartering, taxation without representation, all those good buzz words and phrases, you know. But was it really that bad? I mean, really? Maybe. But it certainly wasn’t as bad as what will be the death blow to society – gay marriage.

Our society is currently faced with a threat a thousand times more dangerous than the tyranny imposed by King George III.

I say “a thousand times more dangerous,” but there is really no adequate measure for comparing a mild tyranny to the destruction of society itself. Same-sex marriage will do precisely that. By changing the definition of marriage, judicial activists and out-of-control legislators will destroy the institution of the family, an institution that is both the origin and bedrock of civil society. Same-sex marriage will be a death blow to a society that is already profoundly disordered.

Really? I thought the end of the last ice age was the bedrock of society that allowed humans to go from being nomadic to agrarian, spurring the development of written language, the idea of the village or town, and helping to form deep cultures, mores, memes, organized religion (unfortunately), and basically everything that crosses one’s mind when considering the very idea of society. Maybe I’m just crazy.

Of course, this quote comes from Michael Heath, ousted leader of the Maine Family Policy Council, formerly known as the Maine Christian Civic League. He isn’t a terribly smart man, awash in religious ideology and consequent sexual immaturity.

His editorial of paranoia, hate, bigotry, and (again) sexual immaturity comes on the same day Bob Emrich, the National Organization for Marriage, and other bigots held a rally in Augusta, spewing their inability to form coherent opinions that have any rational basis. He runs through the same tried old, long-dismissed as legitimate arguments common to Christian bigots. About the only novel idea he has is to an analogy to colonial America and its end days.

The idea that elected representatives or members of the judiciary can impose same-sex marriage against the will of the people is itself tyrannical. By referencing the American Revolution and the Sons of Liberty, I am not suggesting that the answer is a recourse to arms.

The answer is to vote out every member of the Maine Legislature who voted for same-sex marriage, and to vote against Libby Mitchell in her run for governor because I believe she plays a key role in the push for same-sex marriage.

The only major candidate who hates gay people and thinks consensual sex is just so ICKY! is Paul LePage. He’s a terrible choice if only for the fact that he’s a creationist. But then there’s this other ugly fact of which Heath has decided to remind us. LePage is a major bigot as well. (Of course, there’s also the fact that under his time as mayor, Waterville homeowners have actually ended up paying more in taxes, contrary to his claims.)

Those who dispute that the homosexual rights movement causes social instability ought to recall that Gay Pride Month, held every June, commemorates the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969. These riots marked the start of the homosexual rights movement. At its very inception, the movement acted to destabilize society.

Sort of like how all those race riots of 1964 (or any year) showed just how much social instability blacks cause, right?

Heath clearly believes the homosexual can be summed up with a broad brush; individuality, rights, principles, liberties, happiness, and all that other downright silliness be damned, right?

Certain members of the pro-family movement today will bring to Maine’s State House a tour that will proclaim the virtues of marriage in soft, compassionate tones. They are free to do so, but let them also speak truthfully about the appalling evils of same-sex marriage and the homosexual rights movement.

Perhaps they believe a softer, gentler tone will earn the approval of their fellow churchmen and society at large. Maybe so, but their offer of compassion will be a false one, since true compassion follows repentance and should never be construed as justifying an evil act.

I’m torn. Heath was dismissed from his former position because of his strong tone. It’s probably the only thing I can appreciate from this sexually immature man. I actually have to side with him in his chiding of other bigoted leaders who are being kind for purely political reasons. At least Heath is honest in his hatred of things he thinks are icky.

But his tone says nothing of his actual substance. His words mean just the same as what a more politically viable figure might say. He’s an ignorant buffoon who has done nothing in his life to earn respect. He hates gay people because of a book that was written by the few literate pig farmers in town thousands of years ago. The only worthwhile contribution he has to make to society is as an example of what havoc religion can bring upon a society. Because of bigots like Heath, gay couples are unable to get insurance, visit each other in the hospital with any reasonable ease, or even make funeral arrangements when the time comes. I don’t think he has any idea of the utter pain he is inflicting upon so many good people.

Michael Heath is the most immoral man not in a prison in Maine.

Thought of the day

Old people love to pretend their oldness somehow gives them some sort of authority or intellectual superiority. It doesn’t.

The police fear of being recorded

There are a lot of ways police can legally screw people over.

It’s called civil asset forfeiture. You probably already have heard of something like this, where the police get to seize the car and house of some drug kingpin and stick the money in the department’s budget (that’s criminal forfeiture).

But then there’s this loophole where the police can seize anything they suspect has been used in a crime, even if it doesn’t belong to the criminal, and even if there hasn’t been a conviction.

Then if you, as the actual owner of the goods, try to challenge it, the burden of proof is on you to prove you didn’t know it was going to be used in a crime. That’s civil forfeiture.

For the police, there is no legal requirement to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that, say, your TV set was once used by a ring of Dutch pedophiles to view kiddie porn. They can simply take it, without ever giving it back, even if they never formally charge anyone for a crime.

This is obviously bullshit. The police do not deserve this much power. Ever. The average citizens needs all the tools available at his disposal to fight this legal abuse. Unfortunately, police have the ability to take away at least one of those tools.

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states [Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland], it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Police are routinely convicted thanks to video evidence. They’re human. They make errors, stupid decisions, and can be just as criminal as anyone else. They are not special. To take away the ability to catch them when they royally fuck up poses a serious danger to society.

A recent arrest in Maryland is both typical and disturbing.

On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III’s motorcycle was pulled over for speeding. He is currently facing criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.

The case is disturbing because:

1) Graber was not arrested immediately. Ten days after the encounter, he posted some of he material to YouTube, and it embarrassed Trooper J. D. Uhler. The trooper, who was in plainclothes and an unmarked car, jumped out waving a gun and screaming. Only later did Uhler identify himself as a police officer. When the YouTube video was discovered the police got a warrant against Graber, searched his parents’ house (where he presumably lives), seized equipment, and charged him with a violation of wiretapping law.

2) Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steven D. Silverman said he had never heard of the Maryland wiretap law being used in this manner. In other words, Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. Silverman surmises, “It’s more [about] ‘contempt of cop’ than the violation of the wiretapping law.”

3) Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley is defending the pursuit of charges against Graber, denying that it is “some capricious retribution” and citing as justification the particularly egregious nature of Graber’s traffic offenses. Oddly, however, the offenses were not so egregious as to cause his arrest before the video appeared.

Take a look at the video. Graber was horribly speeding and acting entirely irresponsible on the road, but that’s all he was doing. He deserves a severe ticket and probably a temporary suspension of his license. Nothing more.

The cop, J.D. Uhler, ought to receive a reprimand for pulling his gun like an utter toolbag right after the charges are dismissed against Graber. I don’t foresee such justice.

But it isn’t all bad news.

Happily, even as the practice of arresting “shooters” expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested “shooter,” the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.

As journalist Radley Balko declares, “State legislatures should consider passing laws explicitly making it legal to record on-duty law enforcement officials.”

I hope these laws and interpretations of existing laws make their way to the Supreme Court. Scalia would probably make his usual political ruling in favor of police, but there’s hope enough justices would see just how wrong this all is.

Be sure to check out Photography is Not a Crime for more.

Harvey Pekar

Harvey Pekar was awesome. Now he is dead.

Homeopathic fertility treatment

Via NewEnglandBob via xkcd.

Open discussion

Discuss something. Anything you would like.

Go.

Thought of the day

I just watched the so-called highlights of the World Cup match. It was amazing. Soccer is somehow able to be so boring that even its highlights make me want to shoot myself.

Prof Mike Adams mocks CLS decision

The Supreme Court recently said a university is not required to give its student groups the same First Amendment protections a private group would receive so long as it is treating the groups equally. It’s akin to a private employer allowing its employees to form groups while putting the restriction on them that no employee may be excluded from any given group for any reason. It’s entirely reasonable.

Now a professor – Mike Adams – has a column I suspect is tongue-in-cheek.

I can’t stand atheists. And I plan to do something about them. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court has given me a powerful tool to use in my war against the godless. Earlier this week, the Court ruled that a public university may require all student organizations to admit any student as a voting member or officer. The decision applies even to a student who is openly hostile to the group’s fundamental beliefs.

It’s perplexing why Adams is focusing on atheists. The decision was based upon the Christian group suing a university. Atheists had nothing to do with it. But whatever. He’s right, students hostile to the message of a group may still join that group – provided the school has an all-comers policy. I’m not sure Adams’ university, UNC, has that policy. If it doesn’t, his whole rant doesn’t apply.

Another site that picked up on Adams has pointed out another flaw in this DIABOLICAL PLAN!

The court’s decision pointed out that student groups could still, for example, expel members who didn’t pay dues, or restrict officer positions to those who had been members for a year or more. If his “young Christian warriors” wanted to disrupt an atheist club, they’d have to sit and wait for a year, paying to promote atheism the whole time, before they’d get their chance. I doubt many Christians would be willing to do that. Or an atheist law students’ club could just forgo official recognition, exactly as the court emphasized that they could, and restrict their membership to professing nonbelievers.

The final point is the primary problem with what Adams is saying. As so many angry, bitter, legally doltish Christians seem to do, Adams is conflating what private groups must be allowed to do versus what university endorsed groups must be allowed to do. As the Supreme Court noted, a student group can forgo official recognition by the university, thus becoming just another private group, allowed to exclude a great many people. In other words, the court said universities do not have to endorse bigotry.

But Adams continues.

The Court acknowledges that such “accept all comers” policies may not in fact be desirable for maintaining robust debate on public college campuses. I concur. And I like it that way. I do not seek robust debate. I seek power over the godless heathen dissident.

The article is tongue-in-cheek and I don’t foresee Adams actually following through, but this makes sense. I mean, the arguments of atheists have long frustrated theists who are unable to give coherent responses. (And by “frustrated theists” I mean all theists who have ever bothered to think.) The only reason Christians and other theists are able to maintain any power is through sheer numbers, not rationality or reason.

But sure, Adams can go ahead and invade other groups if he really wants. He might even succeed in making sure universities do not adopt all-comers policies. But he’ll still be wrong about this Supreme Court decision. And all because he is unable to differentiate between protections for private groups under the constitution and protections for what private groups may do within their own internal structure. It’s sad and intellectually pathetic.

Hubble captures fireworks

How a theist can look at all the fantastic images Hubble has offered humanity and somehow not feel insignificant in the Universe is one of the greatest feats of arrogance there is.

This gorgeous star cluster doesn’t need a holiday to set off fireworks. Officially called NGC 3603, the small community of young stars is located about 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina.

Ultraviolet radiation and violent stellar winds from the cluster’s stars shoved away the cloud of gas and dust in which the stars formed, giving the Hubble Space Telescope’s new Wide Field Camera 3 a clear view. Hubble captured this image in August 2009 and December 2009, just a few months after the new camera was installed, in both visible and infrared light. The image shows a sharper view of the stars than an earlier image taken with Hubble’s NICMOS infrared camera in 2007, and traces sources of sulfur, hydrogen and iron.

Most of the stars in the cluster were born around the same time, but age differently depending on their masses. Clusters like NGC 3603 give astronomers a lab to study stars’ life cycles in detail, as well as a window into the origin of massive star formation in the distant universe. NGC 3603’s stars are among the most massive known. After they burn through their fuel, these stars will end their lives in spectacular supernova explosions.

Via Wired.

Cat imitates monkey

Ever since I first laid eyes on it, my favorite animal has been the Golden Lion Tamarin. It’s a beautiful new world monkey that’s pretty rare, but can be found in some zoos, including the one in Washington D.C. (And if I recall correctly, I believe I saw it at the Baltimore Aquarium, for some odd reason.)

Given just how stunning I find this primate, I was rather worried when I read this article about a feline, the Spotted Margay, vocally imitating tamarins as a predatory method.

Researchers first recorded the incident in 2005 when a group of eight pied tamarins were feeding in a ficus tree. They then observed a margay emitting calls similar to those made by tamarin babies. This attracted the attention of a tamarin “sentinel,” which climbed down from the tree to investigate the sounds coming from a tangle of vines called lianas. While the sentinel monkey started vocalizing to warn the rest of the group of the strange calls, the monkeys were clearly confounded by these familiar vocalizations, choosing to investigate rather than flee. Four other tamarins climbed down to assess the nature of the calls. At that moment, a margay emerged from the foliage walking down the trunk of a tree in a squirrel-like fashion, jumping down and then moving towards the monkeys. Realizing the ruse, the sentinel screamed an alarm and sent the other tamarins fleeing.

My heart raced. Everyone knows only cute animals are worthy of human sympathy, but I’ve never seen a pied tamarin. Was it as cute as a golden lion tamarin? Could this feline have been attacking something I would be willing to irresponsibly feed purely due to its cuteness?

Phew!

This encounter was actually unsuccessful, but it shows just how cunning evolution has made some cats. Locals have claimed that they have also observed this behavior in other members of the feline family, including jaguars, cougars, and ocelots. The next step will be to determine if this is true (and I suspect it is), and then do more research to determine if there is a genetic basis for these actions beyond the obvious basis of simply being feline. I lean towards the behavior being learned simply because it hasn’t been observed with captured specimens or with specimens living in vastly different areas, but also because agoutis (rodents) also find themselves a target of margay mimicry, and they make an entirely different sound from tamarins.

But the margay’s remarkable abilities are not limited to traditional feline characteristics and mimicry. Take a look at this video.